Moderation In All Things

There are thankless jobs, and then there is the job of moderator during a high-profile political debate. Which, to be fair, is really just another thankless job: it is surely not worse than working as Michael Lohan's personal assistant or waiting on Sean Hannity in a restaurant or playing for the Sacramento Kings. But this year's moderators, up to and including tonight's debate-host Bob Schieffer, have all come in for their share of criticism. As with most politicians, that criticism came from people who would not, in any number of lifetimes, change jobs with those moderators. It's easier to assail Jim Lehrer for looking like a much-less-forceful version of Robert Blake's character in Lost Highway during the first debate than it would be to do Lehrer's job, which involved simultaneously trying to get Mitt Romney to stop talking and trying to keep President Obama awake. Ditto for Candy Crowley, who had the temerity to interrupt Romney during an untruth and has since been made the fulcrum of an elaborate conspiracy theory--it involves The Media, that guy named Kerry from Mineola, the Council on Foreign Relations and Daniel Tosh--by many on the right.

Of course, there are some actual and valid complaints to be lodged against the debate hosts we've seen thus far. The questions from Martha Raddatz in the Vice Presidential debate and what glurgs and ums Lehrer was able to stammer out in the first Presidential debate mostly reflected the narrow biases and interests of Washington-based media--war, the deficit, taxes, the deficit, and the deficit--and neither had much luck getting the candidates to follow even the most rudimentary of rules, or to answer the actual questions that had been asked. This is all about as not-good as you've heard.

But the good news is that the Commission on Presidential Debates is listening. While they opted to go with another monied septuagenarian in Monday's foreign policy debate, the organization went so far as to stage practice debates with a number of other moderators. That we're all still seeing Schieffer on Monday night is proof of how poorly these other possible moderators did in their auditions, but the CPD is on the case. Our shared national dream of a 2016 Presidential Debate tri-hosted by Allison Brie, Paul Krugman and Terry Bradshaw may not be dead yet. It just won't be hosted by any of these three:

Nancy Grace
Though Grace was the most accomplished news-ish broadcaster of the three candidates below, hers was the audition that went the worst, sources said. Grace arrived at the set six hours early, already in full hair and makeup, but refused to do any of the basic getting-up-to-speed that producers requested. Instead, Grace sat in her chair, glaring at the podiums onstage. "She didn't move," one production assistant told me. "Like at all, just staring. It looked like someone had switched her off or something. And this is with all kinds of distractions: the audience comes in, Paul Ryan is backstage doing karaoke to [Rage Against The Machine's] 'Killing In The Name Of,' at one point Biden rides a chopper down the aisle and is like 'Where can I park this fucker?' And nothing from her, like at all." Another witness recalled hearing Grace saying the words "Tot Mom" to herself under her breath, rapidly and repeatedly, for the hour before the debate; she remembers it sounding "like a Philip Glass song."

Observers agreed that Grace was, if anything, both stranger and worse once the debate started. Her introductory remarks were described as "harrowing and vicious-sounding, but competent," but the debate flew off track during Grace's first question, which was about the death penalty. After asking each candidate to stake out his position on capital punishment, Grace spent 45 minutes asking the candidates about whether they would apply it in specific cases. "Like, really specific cases," the former production assistant said. "I don't think anyone but her really knew what they were. But she was all: 'How about Gracie Jane, do you think Slay Dad should die in that one? Okay, but how about Baby Bryce, don't you think Kill-Sitter deserves to die for that? And some of them I don't even think were real. Was there really a Werewolf Aunt thing in the news last year?'"

Jon Gruden
No one who witnessed the former Super Bowl winner and current ESPN Monday Night Football color commentator's debate performance questioned his preparation or intensity. Gruden reportedly spent the week before the debate watching tape of the two candidates talking, sleeping in an office below the auditorium. "The only way we knew he was even there was this delivery guy, who brought a fresh crate of chocolate chip Clif Bars and Mountain Dew Code Red to the basement every day," a source says.

But while Gruden was unquestionably more professional in his approach than Grace, he was similarly prone to getting bogged down in insignificant details. "I want you to look at your gestures here," Gruden said to Romney at one point in the debate, running a three-second loop of a Romney wince back and forth for nearly four minutes. "I want you to, and I'll tell you what: you want to talk about an inauthentic movement, just not convincing, let's look at this. Look at this right here. Here. Here. Here. It's weird, is what it is. Tell you what, you think the guy making that movement doesn't look like RoboCop getting a colonoscopy?" After a brief, frantic chuckle, Gruden concluded. "That's my question, candidate." The general consensus was that, with some work, Gruden could be a decent candidate in 2016, either as a moderator or a Florida congressman.

Twitter
An idea that was great in theory and a disaster in execution, the Twitter debate was to have pulled questions at random from the social networking site and directed them at the candidates. The questions came fast and furious, but were mostly either not questions, mis-tagged Twitpics of teenagers pulling duckfaces, or included the hashtag #TeamBreezy. Among the others that made it through before Twitter's over-capacity message appeared were an awful pun from Dennis Miller's Twitter account, an invitation to "watch my private cam-session xoxo" from a fake-seeming account registered to Iphigenie Vuuj, and a sentence fragment--"like leprechauns, but sneakier"--from @Horse_eBooks. Everyone agreed that Rob Delaney's was the best. "He's on the list for the next round of debates," a Commission on Presidential Debate insider told me. "We just want to pair him with someone who has serious policy chops. So Will.i.am or Hank Williams Jr. or Wolf Blitzer. Something like that."